Okay, I know exactly who this loot-promoting trailer for forthcoming D&D hack ‘n’ slasher Daggerdale is aimed at. It’s for the action-RPG player who is basically in it for the haul. You know who you are. Hell, I know who some of you are. You just want that big sword, don’t you? And a bigger one? And shinier? You filthy beast.

The gameplay looks rather stilted and cumbersome judging by the video. The character movements across the ground are kind of jerky and not fluid. As if it plays like a turn-based RPG that doesn’t care for precise control of your character.

Why does this have a “Dungeons and Dragons” on it? It has nothing to do with any version of those rules, as far as I can tell.

I cannot see anything that would make me want to buy this. At all. I found out that if you just want higher stats on your items, you can open Paint, make yourself a really nice “Awesomeness +2″ sticker and glue it on your real items.

I will never understand the marketing behind this dam game. They never show in the trailer that it’s coming out for PC, and even if you go to the website they don’t say anywhere there that it’s coming out ether. Yet it supposedly is. Why the hell do developers do this?

There seems to be a rash of games coming out that all look identical with some generic engine using bad global lighting and the same tired particle effects. This one simply waves the D&D flag in the mud for the 892th time in the past 20 years and makes a mockery of the PC platform with its generic console gameplay. Besides, Torchlight 2 is right around the corner…

Hell yeah, 4th Edition basically says “I’m a ruleset a monkey could make into a videogame. Wink Wink Nudge Nudge saynomore”.
And what are they doing? They’re throwing out the rules and are making a hack and slash. I’ll be so glad when Atari finally bites the dust and someone else gets to have a go at the DnD license.

Given how many class tricks concern shifting self or opponent between squares, suspect problem is: 4th Ed is monkey-wrenchable into turn-based, grid-movement RPG. Which, fondly remembered and rabidly clamoured for as it may be, does not appear desirable to majority of developers. Cue lamentations.

Anyone who kept up with D&D games on the Ecksbawks will realize this is basically Dark Alliance from an over-the-shoulder perspective. Atari, I am disappoint.

Honestly, there’s really no need for another Dungeons and Dragons game at all. I want Dark Heresy: The Video Game. Then, even if the gameplay was pathetically bare-bones (which it would have no reason to be) you’d still at least be left with an interesting setting.